This week’s theme: recovering a sense of power. Not so sure if I’ve recovered a sense of “power” or what this “power” is supposed to feel like. I will say that I continued with the Morning Pages. 7 for 7 again. Admittedly, more than a few days were mid-afternoon, or just-before-bed pages, but they did happen. I did slack a bit this week with keeping up with last week’s “little changes”: meditating & getting up earlier. But I still want to do those things, so I’m just letting this week be what it was. I did have some days where all three of those things happened. I choose to focus on those days.

This week’s Artist Date was actually pretty cool. I hadn’t intended for it to be my AD, but the possibility arose on Friday and then I took advantage of it Saturday. One of my favorite musicians/singers of all time is Imogen Heap. I’ve seen her in concert a couple of times & just loved it. She also is incredibly interesting as a creative person. She kind of has a no-holds barred, totally open, experimental vibe that I appreciate & admire. She is uniquely herself. Something I’m working on. Anyways, she was in LA this weekend for promotional stuff for her new album Ellipse, which comes out in August. She’s very active on Twitter, & I follow her. There, she announced that she was going to do a free listening party for her album at the Hotel Cafe (a small concert venue) in LA on Saturday afternoon. I wasn’t sure if I was going to go. I thought it would be too crowded. But then I realized that I needed to go. One of the tasks for this week’s Artist’s Way was to list the people you admire & she was one of the people I put. (By the way, I’m totally not the groupie type. I just happen to really appreciate her.) So, I realized I had to go. So, Saturday afternoon at noon, I made my way over. I was actually right on time, even though I was sure I was going to be late given the unexpected freeway traffic (accident) & parking search (no cash on me, needed a lot that took cards). So, waiting in line, there were probably about 150-200 people there. The event was late in getting started, so while we were all lined up to go in, she actually came out to tell us that they were running late with the set-up. So nice of her. So, we finally got in & she played about 6 songs of her new album & talked about them & took questions. So, I ended up in the back. I really didn’t want to be up front & I really wanted something to lean against, like the wall. So, she had her laptop set up in the middle of the room to play the tracks. But then as each track was playing she would walk back to where I was standing & hang out & dance along to her own songs or talk to her manager. It was so cool to be that close to her. She was totally down-to-earth. Admittedly, I really don’t get worked up by the whole famous person thing–chalk it up to growing up in LA & knowing people who were “in the business” when I was growing up. But still, it was just cool that I was listening to her new album while standing right next to her. Later I did get a chance to talk to her & got an autograph as I was leaving. So, just a really cool afternoon. Got to hear some great music. Me, myself, & I enjoyed our Artist’s Date. (Again, I wonder if I’m doing them right…should they be more hands on…but listening to live music is what I love, so I’m going with the idea that these should be things that I have fun doing.)

The only task I didn’t do from this week’s exercises was the artist-brain activity. Cameron believes that we have two brains: our logic brain & our artist brain. Cameron writes, “[The logic brain] thinks in a neat, linear fashion. As a rule, logic brain perceives the world according to known categories.” It is “our Censor.” Where as our artist brain is “our inventor, our child, our very own personal absent-minded professor.” The artist brain is our creative side & there are certain activities that tap into this brain & allow it to be dominant for a time. Most of these activities are physical activities that we often do by rote, allowing our logic brain to become passive. So, the idea this week was to do one of those activities for an hour. Never quite got around to it, at least consciously. I do realize I need more of those kinds of things. Driving is definitely a major one for me. God knows, most of my good ideas for my novel tend to come when I’m driving aimlessly. But I need to take more time to do some of these activites. More activities where I can shut down, or at least block out the logic/active part of my brain to give the artist/creative side a chance to run loose.

So, week 3. Again, not so sure how well I recovered the sense of power. But, it still felt like a good week in terms of the process for me. Now onto week 4, and recovering a sense of integrity.

By the way, I realize I need to get back to posting about more than just this process. I’ll be back mid-week with something on the novel process.

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One Response to “the artist’s way: week 3”

To me your ‘little things’ were/are quite huge! And there are two of them! I would think ‘getting up earlier one day a week’ would be my kind of a start … then add more days, add meditating once a week, whatever – just something ‘less’ so you can overachieve if you do more vs. feel you’ve ‘failed’ (not that strong but you know what I mean) if you miss one day.

Just my long-distance input – best to set whatever goals feel right for YOU of course!